From the “non-extremists” on the Left who will get wiped out tomorrow:

It’s amazing! MSNBC posts a NYT article that is critical of Venezuela. Venezuela endures worse murder rate than Iraq. A lot worse. Who knew that things have not been going well in that Socialist Paradise to the south, that the liberals are so proud of?

In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.

These numbers are about 3 times higher than what they were when Chavez took office and started reshaping the country towards his ideals. While mentioning the grim economic realities, NYT of course tries to mention the usual liberal garbage about rich and poor, but only in passing:

Reasons for the surge are complex and varied, experts say. While many Latin American economies are growing fast, Venezuela’s has continued to shrink. The gap between rich and poor remains wide, despite spending on anti-poverty programs, fueling resentment. Adding to that, the nation is awash in millions of illegal firearms.

Finally Chavez’s tactics are grudgingly revealed:

But some crime specialists say another factor has to be considered: Mr. Chávez’s government itself. The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement. Many experienced state employees have had to leave public service, or even the country.

More than 90 percent of murders go unsolved, without a single arrest, Mr. Briceño-León said. But cases against Mr. Chavez’s critics — including judges, dissident generals and media executives — are increasingly common.

Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda, a state encompassing parts of Caracas, told reporters last week that Mr. Chávez had worsened the homicide problem by cutting money for state and city governments led by political opponents and then removing thousands of guns from their police forces after losing regional elections.

The article is a good read and I’ll bet that there will be no mention of it anywhere on the Left. The anti-capitalists, dictators and demagogues, are their heroes and not to be criticized publicly. But the naked truth about socialist methods is out for all to see.

The liberal Daily Kos website got defrauded by the pollster they’ve used for quite a long time. Many people, especially on the Right, have been skeptical over their consistently liberal-favoring numbers, but I could not have imagined the scope of the fraud. From my somewhat mathematical, if not statistical, background it looks like the numbers have been either manually adjusted or completely made up without regard for good “fake” statistically possible results.

To Kos’s credit he lays the case out openly on the front page of his site – Research 2000: Problems in plain sight – where he explains the statistical incongruities, and More on Research 2000 with more information.

It is an interesting read. He will be suing the firm. Should he have looked at the results earlier based on their liberal bias? I am not sure, as any poll can be made to skew to a particular side depending on methodology. That does not make a poll invalid, just biased.

Considering the facts, I think he handled it well, and though I despise the liberal ideology and most of the stuff published on that site, I think the way he did this should be recognized.

WSJ reports that S&P downgraded Greece to Junk Status today severely limiting the proud Democratic Socialist nation’s options of getting out of its mostly self-inflicted crisis.

“The downgrade results from our updated assessment of the political, economic and budgetary conditions that the Greek government faces in its efforts to put the public debt burden onto a sustained downward trajectory,” said S&P credit analyst Marko Mrsnik.

Earlier S&P downgraded Portugal, and some other nations like Spain, Ireland, and Italy are potentially in trouble as well.

This is definitely not what Germany and France envisioned when they originally went all out for the brotherhood of European Nations. Germany especially was all for it while imagining a huge marketplace with happy countries producing amazing products non-stop led by the diligent German businessmen. It was that new internationalist spirit that flew over the concerns of some nations’ work ethics and philosophy being incompatible with the Free Markets and Capitalism.

As Germany is now having to consider bailing Greece out, with German citizens extremely wary of handing cash out to beggars with not much hope of getting it back, and the real possibility of taxes being raised, they are suddenly no longer singing the European Union ra-ra-ra song.

The few options facing the moribund Greek nation include defaulting on the debt, getting a bailout which would probably put Greek government out of business while European Union makes the decisions, pulling out of the Euro, or getting out of the European Union completely.

With so much invested in the European Union, it is hard for me to imagine that it would fall apart over this. However the severity of the problems facing Eurozone is so understated and the reluctance of the producing nations like Germany, Austria, England, and France to keep southern European Nations afloat could bring this house of cards down and drastically reduce EU membership letting the sinking ships float away on their own.

In good economic times everyone is a brotherman, but in bad it’s everyone for themselves making the European Socialist promise a sham. The countries most neo-liberal in philosophy will survive. The decrepit socialist paradises will keep sinking.

And finally Czech president tells it like it is, as usual, blaming the Euro for helping Greek inability to help themselves -

Czech Pres Klaus:Euro To Blame For Greek Crisis:Germany Press

some choice tidbits:

The Greek crisis is the fault of the single currency system, which fails to allow the troubled southern European country to devalue its exchange rate, the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus said in an interview pre-released Tuesday…

As regards to economic growth and stability, the Eurozone has been dead for a long time, but given the large amount of political capital invested in the union, its politicians will never let it collapse formally, the Czech president told Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung…

It is the “euro that has caused this tragedy,” Klaus claimed. Without the single currency, the Greek government could have coped with the crisis by having a 40% devaluation of its currency, but in a currency union this is not possible, he reminded…

The president, whose euro-skeptic beliefs are well-known, said that he feared the crisis was being used as a pretense “for even more Europeanization” and “unification.” Indeed, the “freedom and prosperity” of Europe is already under threat, he claimed.

Yeah, that’s what we need… New World Order with one currency so we can all sink together.

We are staring into the abyss of Government controlled Healthcare and the Democrats are incredibly close to pushing us in. This weekend is like an emergency room visit and it is almost at a point where only our will and determination has any last chance to succeed in blocking this monstrosity. The Obama administration has had many opportunities in the MSM to present their point of view and to paint the situation on their terms. Has our side really had the same opportunity to present ours? Can we really compete with the power of the State of the Union or his previous major addresses to the country?

In my view the GOP has not had an equal opportunity to present an opposing view, at least not with the same potential power. The steady drumbeat of “something must be done to reform healthcare” has taken this despicable Bill to where it is today – just a few days away from being passed.

It is GOP’s last chance to present our point of view before the last democratic undecideds make up their mind under duress from their leadership.

GOP must immediately tell the media that the import of this legislation is so great, and the chance of affecting our culture and our way of life so huge, that we are owed one last Prime Time appeal to the American Public and indeed to the Members of Congress that is similar to what the Obama Administration has been accorded. Give us one more chance to describe how our country will be affected if this legislation is pushed through. GOP must demand, due to the critical and time sensitive nature of this situation, that they allow us to put someone likable, like Scott Brown, in front of the viewers on Friday or Saturday night on all the networks for this last appeal to the Nation. We must be able to make our case one last time – or are we not allowed our Closing Arguments? Fairness demands it.

I fear that if this step is not taken, our chances of stopping the healthcare overhaul are getting slimmer by the minute. Are we not owed equal time? GOP has to demand this.

A new <a href=”http://americanresearchgroup.com/“>ARG poll that just came out</a> for MA shows good news continuing for Brown.

Likely voters will vote 48% for Brown to 45% for Coakley. Additionally:

A total of 9% of likely voters say they have already voted by absentee ballot, with Brown leading Coakley 58% to 42%.

Can’t wait!

Very few people, aside from the leftist kooks living in the lala land, really believe that President Obama has done anything that merits a supposed honor that a Nobel Peace Price bestows. Putting the political joke of the Nobel Peace Price itself aside, as well as disregarding the previous recipients (Terrorist Arafat, Anti-Semite Carter, Environmentalist Fairy Gore, North Korean Peace Lover Kim Jong Il, etc), and knowing the true nature of the award being in the hands of serious America haters we should understand the potential real world implications of such an award given to our first Black President.

Not being one of President Obama’s biggest supporters I’d like to share a few of my initial impressions of what this means, and it definitely means something. President Obama has not done anything yet to advance the vacuous and disingenuous “cause of world-wide Peace” but there are quite a few big decisions on his enormous plate that are looming over our future.

This award comes right before a hugely important decision on Afghanistan is due. We are at the fork where we will either slowly start abandoning our fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, or we will inject the much needed and requested troops into the fight where a chance of winning depends on manpower levels and proper unyielding strategy. This award (or rather the forces behind it) squarely aim to undermine the proper course as unpeaceful.

This award comes at a time when US is engaged on many fronts in the fight against Islamic Extremism and is designed to put a disingenuous thread of shame into any argument defending our war. It was given to undermine the pragmatic continuation of many of our policies from the Bush administration as if to say – “Hey Barack, you are better than this. Be a peacemaker and learn to live with the Islamic Extremists. They are not that bad.”

Ultimately this award is an advance on future policy. A fundamentally anti-American future policy as the people behind the award continuously demonstrated. We will now see how our President responds given this not so subtle push into a very wrong direction.

If you have a shred of decency Mr. President, do not follow on that path.

Two days ago I posted a A Modest Proposal for Social Change which was quite obviously not well thought out. I came up with the idea after talking to a liberal co-worker of mine. We were discussing the reasons for the drop of crime in New York City and he suggested (after reading Freakanomics) that legalizing abortion had a lot to do with it, of course in addition to increasing the police force and changing their tactics.

I did not buy that legalization of abortion had that much of an effect at all, but it brought to mind the point that millions of babies were never born, and what would be a more ideal, non-controversial, and positive way of achieving similar results (of not having poor babies suffering being raised in far from ideal households) without taking those lives.

Unfortunately the easiest way to achieve it is through government intervention and as a conservative I should’ve thought better than proposing such a intrusive, though voluntary, government incentive program that deals with quite sensitive and important reproductive issues. To give any government any control in such an area would be a serious mistake, no matter the initial benevolent intentions. It is a slippery slope and it pretty much amounts to ends justify the means, and the means could be fairly atrocious.

Lots of good civil arguments were made and I agreed with a decent amount of them, though of course being defensive, which prompted some less than sensible exchanges.

I apologize for bringing it up the idea, which while not “liberal/progressive” in nature, with the goal of saving money and reducing suffering, is still a big government utilitatarian program that is ultimately antithetical to my own conservative libertarian ideology.

Social Conservatives mostly oppose abortion, while Liberals mostly support the right to have one. There are few areas of agreement on the subject between the two sides. I have no interest in addressing the subject directy but have an idea that may appeal to most people no matter your views.

The idea of paying for someone else’s abortion is very objectionable to most people, but at the same time the idea of paying for raising someone else’s child that could not have been afforded is, while not as morally objectionable, very unfair and financially painful.

There is a both moral and financially conscious way of taking care of both problems. The government should offer $10,000 (amount modifiable) for any woman voluntarily deciding to undergo a Tubal Ligation surgery (surgical sterilization technique for women). The benefits of such an approach are great. Consider this:

• Lower Class women who have children and can barely afford to take care of what they already have will get a nice bonus and the government will not need to subsidize any new ones.
• Middle Class women who don’t want to worry about the future moral decisions in case of an accidental pregnancy.
• Those who oppose the choice of abortion on moral grounds will see the amount of abortions drop as the amount of pregnancies will drop.
• Those who care about the poor will see less suffering and less unwanted children.
• The taxpayers would benefit the most as the cost of raising a child is easily above a quarter of million right now, and will only go up. The amount of children our government has to subsidize is enormous.
• Crime would go down, since as we all know that a majority of criminals come from the kind of households that produce the most unwanted babies.

The voluntary nature of this proposal, applying to all American women, would ensure that no one could claim discrimination or population control, while providing a civilized way of reducing the number of unwanted babies, abortions, suffering, and governmental waste. It is much less controversial than trying to reduce child assistance to those who keep having babies, or to subsidize abortions. It will save taxpayers a huge amount of money as well as reduce crime in the future.

Tell me why this would not work?

In the American New Left’s eyes, being “democratically elected” absolves you of all evil past, present and future and grants teflon legitimacy impervious to criticism. If you dare to question the actions of the democratically elected leftists (yes it only applies to the Left or terrorists) you will be castigated as an authoritarian fascist.

We’ve seen it with the Left’s insistence on negotiations with Hamas, their love affair with Chavez, and now their new hero – the freshly deposed President Zelaya of Honduras.

To rationally thinking this is nothing but putting lipstick on a pig, which in the above cases is truly insulting to pigs.

Hamas is a terrorist group and their “democratic win” was preceded by terrorism, and followed by terrorism to cement their adherence to democratic principles. Yet the Left screams at both our and Israeli leaders to negotiate with them in good faith and to recognize them because after all they were elected.

Chavez is a authoritarian thug who while winning presidential vote twice (purportedly) has moved to consolidate power and abolish term limits, while suppressing the opposition and packing all elements of government with his own people. Yet the Left excuses it all due to him being “democratically elected” and more insidiously for his communist agenda.

Zelaya, a friend of Chavez, is a wannabe thug. Unfortunately for him, he did not have Chavez’s popularity – even his own party hated him, but his designs on power were the same. He tried to illegally force a referendum on whether the constitution should be changed for him to be able to run again. It’s a common theme in the developing world – thuggish presidents want to hold on to power for as long as possible and by whatever means possible. Obama and the Left immediately started the chant of “democratically elected” and how Democracy must be restored. How much longer will it be until Chavez is spending nights in the Lincoln bedroom?

Democratic elections are neutral tools to let the people decide who should be their leader. They do not grant legitimacy nor absolve all acts, past, present or future. Nor do they turn dictators into freedom loving leaders. Democratic elections do not grant moral value to the people being elected, it is their actions that do.

I just wish that Obama’s committment to “democracy” was the same in the case of Iran.